


Desolation

by MrProphet



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 15:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10699419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Desolation

The Fisher Estate was built in Sixties, a shining hive of white towers. By 1970 the towers were streaked and filthy, the lifts broken and the stairwells full of piss and muggers. By 1980 half the flats were empty. Most of the people who remained were either habitual criminals or worse, habitual victims; the kind who'd call the cops and scream bloody murder until someone came to find their missing cats, then pop out to the shops for another hundred fags and step over the prone forms of the snitches and the rape victims who littered the stairs and alleyways.

I always hated the Fisher Estate, even when I lived there as a kid and my Mum would try to convince me and Raine that we lived in a palace in the sky. Raine seemed to buy into it, but I was pretty young when I figured out that palaces were furnished in satin and littered with jewels, not cluttered with the gutted skeletons of brutalised shopping trolleys and scattered with discarded needles. I'd dream of getting out, of getting away from the Fisher; of following the only people I ever saw pass through who didn't stink of the place.

To me, as a child, the cops were like knights in shining armour. Sure, they were as rough as the gangs some of the time and some of them weren't far off being gangsters themselves, but they had clean cars and clean uniforms and they came from a magical land outside the Estate where life was better; it just had to be.

That was why I left, as soon as I could. I saw pretty much everything that happened on the estate, so scraped together some money grassing up dealers to the cops, and when I had enough I got a poky flat somewhere equally squalid and joined the Force.

The outside world was a bit of a rip-off, all told, but the Force was everything I'd hoped. Well, except that it took me back home.

The first time was the worst. It was my first week as a fully-fledged constable and Sergeant Lock and I were called to a suspected suicide. I got a sinking feeling as we approached the familiar tower. By the time we saw the body, my mother's body, I wasn't even surprised. Raine had taken off, not that I blamed her, and nothing I could do would persuade her to get back in touch.

After a month of counselling I was ready to get on again, but I was never able to approach the Fisher without a sick dread in my throat that this time it would be Raine: Raine lying at the bottom of a tower block; Raine lying dead with junk gumming her eyes shut and cats eating her fingers; Raine lying half-naked and strangled in a foetid stairwell; Raine covered in blood and bruises while the neighbours tell us what a good bloke the husband she'd just stabbed after the hundred-and-ninety-eighth beating was.

This particular night we were chasing a couple of damned joyriders and lost them somewhere around the Lamorak Tower. They put out all the lights and in the rain we didn't see them turn. Next thing we knew we'd looped around and there was the car, blazing like a pyre. We got out to see if there was anyone still in it and before we could get close through the heat the little shits had only gone and nicked our patrol car. We'd locked up and everything, but these little scrotes don't give a crap for that.

So there we were, standing in the road, getting drenched to the skin while a fucking Ford Focus fizzled out in front of us, when we heard the noise, a mournful note that resolved into a song, and there, walking along as calm as you please, like there wasn't a force nine blowing up off the river and rain that would have Noah reaching for the nearest adze, there came a procession.

There were four men and five women, all dressed in white and heading for Chapel Square at the foot of Fisher Tower. It was pitch black, but they were all lit up like they were on stage or something, and as they came near we felt the wind and the rain die down.

The first girl wore a white dress, like an old-fashioned nurse's uniform, but with a veil below the cap. She was carrying a big, silver plate, with a white cloth half-covering it and, on the cloth, a cup made of... I can't say what of, only it was black and gold and silver all at the same time and... and looking at it felt wrong, but knowing it was there felt right. Two other women, younger than her and dressed almost as bridesmaids, walked to either side and slightly behind her, each carrying a plate covered by a cloth.

A man walked behind her, dressed in a white tuxedo and carrying a sword. He gripped the hilt with both hands, the double-edged blade pointing straight up in front of him. It looked sharp and heavy and like it could do someone a nasty, but I would have felt wrong challenging him and Sergeant Lock seemed to feel the same.

If the sword looked dangerous the knives that the next girl carried over her breast, wrists crossed over her heart and blades crossed under her chin, looked lethal. She wore a white blouse, trousers and waistcoat. She was at least half-Chinese and her black hair was almost shocking against so much white.

Another man followed her, wearing what looked like army snow fatigues, including a white flack jacket. He carried in his hands a rifle, a First World War Enfield, I thought, with a bayonet fixed. Blood dripped from the tip of the bayonet in a steady, regular double beat; drip-drip pause, drip-drip pause, like a pulse. Like the woman with the cup, he was escorted by two men in similar garb, each carrying a rifle.

Still neither one of us moved. Only when the last of the procession passed us, a teenage girl barely out of childhood who wore a white cloak and mourning dress and sang as she walked that sad, sad song, did we turn as one and follow.

In Chapel Square a strange company was gathered. There were men and women in white evening dress, mingling freely with the locals in their trademark mix of styles and colours. And yet, looking at them, I saw that those in evening dress were also locals: the teachers from the blighted estate school; Mr and Mrs Balash who kept the library running on their son's generosity; Ms Pike, the church warden.

The procession stopped in front of a man I didn't know. He was old, yet not old; strong in spite of the grey in his hair, yet clearly sick.

The girl stopped singing and turned. She walked back to us, turned again, and took us both by the hand, leading Sergeant Locke and I to seats at the old man's side.

"You are most welcome," he told us. "Sit, see, and ask anything you wish."

We sat, and the two young women with plates uncovered their burdens and brought them around. On one was a jug of wine that seemed sufficient to serve everyone there, and on the other a pile of sandwiches that seemed likewise without limit.

Once everyone was served, the rifle was brought and laid at the old man's feet. The sword was placed in his hand and the women with the cup and the knives came forward.

It was the only time I have ever seen a thigh wound lanced and drained at dinner, and I hope this continues to be the case. The blood that came from the wound was black and foul and clotted. 

I watched the woman with the cup closely, something about her nagging at my mind.

"What the fuck is all this about?" Sergeant Locke demanded.

"The Procession of the Grail and the health of the land," the old man replied.

"The land around here isn't very healthy," I noted.

"This is the Wasteland," the old man replied. "The land is sick as I am sick, and even the Procession can only sustain me, not cure my malady."

"Haven't you been to the hospital?" Locke asked.

The old man just laughed bitterly.

"And what  _would_  cure you?" I wondered aloud, my eyes still on the woman with the Grail.

"For family to greet family and for the Grail make right what was sundered," he replied.

I pondered that a while. Beside me, Locke fell asleep and I watched the woman with the Grail. At last I stood and walked over to her. "Who are you?" I asked.

"You know that," she replied.

The Grail still held the old man's black blood. I reached out and took hold of the stem, and she did the same. Together we emptied the blood from the cup, but what fell upon the grass was not the poisoned blood, but clear, pure water.


End file.
